


707 Bluebird Lane

by Mithrigil



Category: Duke Bluebeard's Castle - Bela Bartok, Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, La Barbe bleue | Bluebeard - Charles Perrault
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As inclined as she is to just have another round against the front door, Judy decides they’ll have lots of time for that, and she can make him wait a little. “Come on. Give me the tour.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	707 Bluebird Lane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [parsnips (trifles)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trifles/gifts).



“You live here alone?”

“Sort of, and not anymore, ” he says, and Judy laughs. He goes on, turning the key in the top lock of the front door, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Enough,” Judy says. “But this does look like the kind of house that would have them.” And it does, in that subversive, second-wave suburban horror way, with big second-floor windows hiding white cloth blinds, a mouth of a door framed by turned wooded columns, the staples from unstrung Christmas lights still glinting under the gutters. All that’s missing is a discarded hobbyhorse on the front lawn.

Kay wrestles with the lock a moment, then shoulders the door open without stepping in. “Should I carry you across the threshold?” he says playfully, giving Judy the bedroom eyes she’s immediately glad she fell for.

“If you can,” she teases right back, and he swings her up in a fireman’s carry, leaving the keys in the door.

He carries her clear up the stairs and straight to the bedroom, and neither of them bothers to shut the front door.

-

When Judy remembers the key ring and scrambles out of bed and back downstairs to fetch it, Kay laughs and says, “This isn’t like the city, Jude. I’d be surprised if anyone passed by at all, let alone someone who wanted to break in to my house.”

“Guess I’ll have to get used to it,” Judy says, covering herself with the door as she pulls it shut.

Kay pins her against the door chest-to-chest, leans down to nuzzle her neck. His beard scrapes her jaw, too long to scratch and too well-kept to tickle. She hadn’t heard him come down the stairs, and that’s eerie in a man Kay’s size, but Judy’s not complaining. He came down without clothes too, and Judy doesn’t feel like complaining about that right now either, just luxuriates in the feel of all her body under his with room to stretch and more to touch. She feels like she could fit herself inside him like a Matryoshka doll. It’s not the creepiest thought she’s had about him since they hooked up, but it sends a chill down her spike that flares up into heat once it hits her core.

“You will.” Kay’s voice is deep, and he growls against her shoulder, low and inviting. “I fully intend to keep you here, Jude. Trap you. Make you part of the furniture.”

“That shouldn’t be so hot,” Judy says, squirming.

“But it is,” he says. He smirks into her skin.

As inclined as she is to just have another round against the front door, Judy decides they’ll have lots of time for that, and she can make him wait a little. “Then I’d better meet my roommates,” she says, and slips under his arm, giving him a little caress to chase after her by. “Come on. Give me the tour.”

“You’re sure?” he asks.

There’s a tremor in his voice. It startles Judy enough that she turns back to look at him. He hasn’t turned away from the door, is still leaning against it like he’s caging her in, like she’s stepped out of herself and into the darkness of the foyer.

“Of course I want the tour,” she says. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with that. “It’s yours. Can’t know a man without knowing his house, right?”

“Right,” he says. It’s uncertain. He turns around, and comes to her, drapes an arm around her naked waist and leads her on. “I can’t promise you’ll only see things you like.”

“I don’t expect to,” she says. The palm of his hand is cold and slick. She nestles into it, thinks she could warm him.

“Unconditional love,” he sighs, like it’s a slur. “So what should it be, _what’s mine is yours_? I’m a man with a past, Jude.”

Judy laughs and kisses the sweat off his shoulder. “If you think I’m in this for the mystery, you’re dead wrong. Come on. I want to know who you are!”

She’s close enough to feel him shiver. But even after that, his smile is cavalier and his words cocksure. “Fine, then.” He hands Judy the ring of keys, nestling them into her palm. She doesn’t remember him taking them out of the door, but that might have been just because he was so close, so tantalizing. “Any door you want. But don’t ask too many questions, okay? I lock some of this stuff away for a reason.”

-

“Then let’s start from the bottom,” Judy says, and unlocks the basement. The light switch on the wall is higher than she’s used to, but well-worn and smooth, and the stairs are carpeted down the center in a rich wine red. She leads him down, or she simply goes down and he follows, like a bodyguard or a ghost. There’s a red emergency light over the boiler, but all the shapes in the dark are too hard to make out. There’s another switch at the bottom of the stairs, with a dimmer, Judy turns it up halfway before her hand falls back to her side.

“I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff,” she says.

He breathes, “You never asked.”

The first words that come to her for what she’s seeing are _torture chamber_ , but she’s pretty sure the correct word is _dungeon_. There’s a cross on the black brick wall dangling with cuffs and chains, an exercise machine converted into what looks like a rack, a strip of industrial velcro on the wall dangling whips and paddles and knives.

“Can I ask you something?”

“That depends on the question, Jude.”

She breathes deep and tries to ignore the scent of blood. “Are you good?”

“The best,” he says, but he sounds like it’s just a fact.

There’s more in here, and Judith can see it, just past the edge of the darkness. Laundry. A tool cabinet. A freestanding curtain-less shower with a rust-colored drain, like the ones in science classrooms for emergencies.

“I think we’re done down, here,” she says instead.

He offers her his hand to lead her back upstairs. The keys dig into both their palms.

-

As long as they’re on the first floor again, she unlocks the closet nearest the garage, just outside the range of the kitchen.

“Do you have a license for these?”

“Every single one of them,” he says, and reaches past her to take the nearest hunting rifle off the wall. “Not for concealed carry, though. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” she repeats. The guns disturb her, perhaps more than the equipment in the basement. Maybe it’s because there are so many. Maybe it’s because they’re so well-cared for. Maybe it’s because, as little as she knows about rifles, they can’t possibly all be for hunting.

But then there are orange stripes on his safety gear, hung neatly on the back of the door, and there are boxes of carefully-labeled cleaning materials, and not a single knife or hide in sight.

“Another question?”

“It depends, just like last time.”

“What do you do with your game?”

“There’s a butcher in town,” he says. “He’ll buy almost anything. What he won’t, I give to the homeless shelter.”

The _almost_ lingers in Judy’s ear, and rings, rings, rings.

-

“You can hunt up anything you want,” he says once she’s unlocked the study. The filing cabinets in the back loom like the columns outside, framing a rolltop desk with gold varnish and scrollwork.

“What’s your business?” she asks, without asking whether she’s allowed.

That must be why he doesn’t answer.

-

The garden out back is rich and fruitful and well-tended. It’s night, but Kay promises, “It’s better in the day, and in the spring,” as he turns on the porch light with resignation and apology. The backyard floods with the last green of a grove of trees, grass drying for the impending winter, bushes and evergreens struggling against the end of autumn.

“What do you use for fertilizer?” Judy asks, and is almost ashamed of the cruelty that seeps into her voice.

He doesn’t answer that either.

-

So he leads her out farther, circles the property. It’s vast, he says, “and that’s why the guns, the deer wander in, and raccoons, sometimes. A possum, once.” Kay seems to grow, his shadow stretching every time one of the outdoor lights flares to life. “I do love the land, I got a great deal on it. Makes me feel free, you know? Alone. King of all I see.”

“Sure,” Judy says. “Whatever.”

-

He shuts the screen door and bars it by slipping a plank into the slide, but Judy is already on her way up the stairs, throwing off her borrowed coat and shoving past every door she sees. The bedroom and the guestroom, unlocked, don’t matter. But the bathroom, of all things, takes a key, and Judy barely gets the door open before Kay charges in. She slams the door shut in his face. He crashes into it hard enough that if she wasn’t pushing it right back it might fly off its hinges.

“Jude!” He yells, and it shakes the floor, and Judy fumbles for the light switch. Her hand slips on the tile and Kay just keeps shouting, “Jude, damn it! Stop! You’ve seen enough, haven’t you? Come on, just come back to bed, we’ll deal with this in the morning.”

“We’re not dealing with shit,” Judy shouts right back. The switch has to be here somewhere, unless it’s on the outside, it would be, oh _god_ , and Kay’s still pounding on the door.

It smells far too familiar in here. Salt. Gentle soap. Clean fresh water

Not like a man’s bathroom.

“Jude, just let it go.” The banging stops, and the pleading in Kay’s voice, it’s like downstairs, handing her the keys. Judy can practically feel him in the room, just from his heat behind her, from the sound of the loose hinges.

“Turn the light on.”

“What?”

“Turn the light,” she snarls. “It’s outside, isn’t it. You turn it on, you let me get a look, and I’ll come out, all right?”

For a moment, neither of them says anything at all. The salt smell wells up through the bathroom, assaults Judy’s eyes.

The lights turn on.

There are haircare products in the shower rack, a curling iron on the sink, and a box of tampons on the toilet ledge.

-

“Ghosts,” she says hatefully, curled up on the floor of the hallway. He drapes himself behind her, nestles her into his arms. He feels as strong as ever, as overwhelming, but cold all through his chest. She could fit inside him, she thinks. She’s left him hollow.

“It’s not what you think,” he whispers.

“What do you know about what I think?”

“You think I killed them,” he says. His shiver passes through to her back, her seat, her legs. “You think I raped them downstairs, and you think I killed them. I’m right.”

“You’re right.” She clutches the keys close to her chest. She counts them. Seven. “There’s one more door.”

“No.”

“ _Yes_ ,” she says, pulling away from him, gathering herself to her knees. “An attic. And I’m opening it.”

“For the love of god,” he says, curling in on himself now that she’s gone.

-

The last door is at the top of a short, winding flight, low enough that Kay has to stoop to unlock it. It’s just the right size for Judy, she thinks, where the rest of the house has made her feel tiny.

Moonlight breaks through the attic roof, and when Kay stands aside, it spills down the stairs, washes over Judy’s face. She climbs toward it, can’t help herself, has to see. Has to know. And she walks through the arc of Kay’s arm, steps from one creaking floorboard to another.

They’re alive, all three of them. Alive, if emaciated and filthy and sallow, with dripping red mouths and jewel-bright eyes.

“I’m sorry, Jude,” Kay says as the women tangle around her, the bones of their pale cold fingers dragging her down. “You really shouldn’t have looked.”

He might be crying, when the door closes, but the last thing Judy sees is the key in the keyhole, snapping out the last of the light.


End file.
